The officer, who has not been identified, shot 21-year-old Emantic "EJ" Bradford, Jr. while responding to a shooting on Thanksgiving night at a mall in Hoover, Alabama. Bradford's mother said her son "was really the hero in all of this"

Published Feb 5, 2019 at 12:35 PM

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In this Nov. 27, 2018, file frame from video, April Pipkins holds a photograph of her deceased son, Emantic "EJ" Bradford Jr., during an interview in Birmingham, Ala.

An Alabama police officer will not face charges for killing a man he mistook for the gunman in a mall shooting, the state's attorney general announced Tuesday, drawing outrage from the slain man's family who said the officer jumped to conclusions when he saw a young black man with a gun.

An officer shot 21-year-old Emantic "EJ" Bradford, Jr. while responding to an earlier shooting on Thanksgiving night at a mall in Hoover, Alabama.

A 26-page investigation report released Tuesday by Attorney General Steve Marshall said the officer believed Bradford fired the earlier shots. But the report also said the Hoover officer, whose name has not been released, was still justified in shooting him because of the threat he posed.

The report said the officer saw Bradford running toward the scene with a gun and believed he was trying to kill the shooting victim or harm others. The shooting victim was actually Bradford's friend, with whom he had been at the mall that evening.

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"A reasonable person could have assumed that the only person with a gun who was running toward the victim of a shooting that occurred just three seconds earlier fired the shots," the report found.

The report also stated that Bradford, who had a gun drawn, "posed an immediate deadly threat to persons in the area."

Marshall released two 10-second clips from surveillance cameras at the shopping mall. The video shows an officer shooting Bradford from behind as Bradford is running. An autopsy found that Bradford was shot three times: once in back of the head, once in his neck and once in his lower back, according to the report.

The report said that the officer told investigators that he did not turn on his body camera from standby mode because there was "no time."

The report also said it was "unclear" if verbal commands were issued for Bradford to stop running. The officer told investigators he did not issue verbal commands, although two witnesses said they heard them, the report stated.

Bradford's family reacted with anger to the attorney general's conclusions.